Rapid Estimation of Pharmacokinetic Parameters Can Be Achieved Through a Simple Vector Projection Technique Applied to DCE-MRI Gadolinium Uptake Curves

Matt N. Gwilliam¹, David J. Collins¹, Martin O. Leach¹, Matthew R. Orton¹

The fitting of pharmacokinetic models to DCE-MRI gadolinium uptake curves is computationally expensive and complicated by several factors including a lack of arterial input function. This work presents a method for determining a simple projection vector, for various pharmacokinetic parameters, that can directly project an uptake curve into PK space. Projection vectors are optimised using a robust fitting algorithm and a training set of uptake curves. The projection vectors are then applied to a set of uptake curves to a test set from a different cohort and good correlation with model fitting techniques is found.